I first started using the Internet and World Wide Web in September, 1993. I was a freshman at Notre Dame. Some friends at Carnegie Mellon University encouraged me to start using a BBS called “ISCA” to keep in touch with them. I visited the computer labs at least twice a week to keep in touch with friends from back home in Pittsburgh. (BBSs are a lesser-publicized online text-based realm filled with “rooms” for discussion posts and a chance to chat one-on-one with friends.)

On one occasion, while looking for the Telnet app on the PC, I stumbled upon a Windows 3.1 desktop icon titled “NCSA Mosaic.” I doubt I can remember the specific day I found this icon, but I recall that it was around the same time I found the entire Monty Python and the Holy Grail script on a USENET group. (Yeah, I printed it. In fact, I may still have it in one of my boxes!) I double-clicked, and there it was … the World Wide Web. My life would never be the same.

Those were the days!

The early days of the World Wide Web cannot be recaptured easily. A small percentage of the original pages exist. The aesthetics were garish. The technology was limited to text and inline images. HTML tables were a couple of years away, and graphics programs struggled to handle high-quality images. Memory lagged and modems chugged along slowly. Nobody knew exactly what “the Web” was.

But everyone had a vision. Justin Hall posted his vision of the Web in 1995. Justin hosted one of the most interesting lists of links to resources on the web in the early days. Titled “Links from the Underground,” Justin’s web site grew to be insanely popular at colleges across the country as the Web began to expose some of the best and worst of human creativity. He also shared a lot about himself in the process.

I particularly like Justin’s charming attempt at finding friends online: “I’m looking for these folks from a 1991 summer student-type trip…”

Some of the earliest artifacts of the Web can be found in the deep, unmanaged recesses of early adopters at universities and public organizations. One of these resources is Notre Dame’s “Gipper,” an early web-based campus newsletter. The “Gipper” nom de plume allowed for an anonymized, gossip-laden view of the Notre Dame campus. One of his entries, dated February 24, 1994, details the Gipper’s adoption of the web as a publishing platform.

Note how “easy” it was to find information on the first Notre Dame web site:

Next time you’ve need to kill a couple hours, look for the Gipper On-Line on Mosaic under the Notre Dame Home Page, under “Links, Links, Links” under “Just Plain Cool Stuff” under “The Orange Room” under “The Toy Box.” The Gipp is thankful for this easy-to-find location.

In 1994, on Mosaic (the web browser), the Notre Dame home page led to “Links, Links, Links” which led to “Just Plain Cool Stuff which led to “The Orange Room” which led to “The Toy Box” which led to “Gipper On-line.” I’m sure you noted the Gipp’s sarcasm at the difficulties of early Web findability.

I am curious as to how to capture the experience of the Web in 1994. Would recapturing the early experiences of the WWW be useful to scholars and historians? How might it best be captured? Historians tend to focus on the early success stories: the Yahoo! guys, Amazon, eBay. What about the lesser-knowns? The Justin Hall’s of the world certainly have a story to tell about the early days of the world’s interactive global medium. How might we best capture that story?

(Note: I’ve contacted Justin, and I am beginning to consider the strategy of capturing the history of the Web from the perspective of those who planted the early seeds of growth. This is tricky territory! I remember it, but how best to capture and share the collective memory?)

[Crossposted to Collecting New Media]